Seven billion dollars is a lot of money, and Ronald A. Rolighed (Economics '89), managing director and member of the management committee for Harris Alternatives LLC, has something to say about that. Ronald is involved in all aspects of Harris’ hedge funds business that manages approximately $7 billion across a variety of absolute-return strategies.
Ronald's current focus is on business development and investor relations, but since his graduation from UNI, his career has been filled with interesting positions. Previously employed at the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) in Chicago’s Financial Markets Unit, Ronald was responsible for supervision and regulation of larger banks’ trading and risk management activities.
Later, Ronald held the position head of risk management for the North American Investment Banking and Securities Business and Strafford Trading. His roles in this company varied as he acted as a quantitative modeler, risk manager and trader in a relative-value arbitrage strategy, all in the same day.
As Ronald looks at his past, he credits UNI’s Economics program for preparing him for these prominent positions. He believes the UNI faculty helped him gain the tools needed to succeed in his career.
Ronald acknowledges Fred Abraham’s Macroeconomics course as helping him uncover the idea that things are neither as simple nor as complex as they usually appear. “I learned a great deal about how to evaluate complex problems.”
While discovering the truths about economic problems, Ronald also gained instruction on the tools used to solve these challenges. This gave him an edge in the business world and helped him succeed.
“The UNI Economics program gave me invaluable experience in the art of communicating solutions. Written communication skills were constantly emphasized and were another area in which I felt I had a leg up on my peers because of the mentoring I received at UNI.”
Clearly Ronald put his experiences and education at UNI to use in the business world. He was selected by the Department of Economics as the alumni-in-residence in recognition of his noteworthy achievements. During his day on campus, Ronald spoke to the Directed Research In Economics class, visited with the faculty of the Economics Department and made a presentation to the Economics Club.
Updated 14-May-07
